First Listen: Benita 'The Worst'

Benita is an exceptionally talented Toronto based singer/songwriter who has a gifted pen. She was born in the city in North York and raised there among a cultural melting pot of influences. Touching beefily on that, she remarked, “I feel that a lot of the Toronto slang is from London, especially the style and the Caribbean, especially Jamaican influence and culture.”

She has enjoyed experiences such as performing in Daniel Caesar’s choir for his Freudian Tour in 2017, and also most recently opening for Savannah Ré and Jon Vinyl.

New Wave Magazine spoke to Benita about the meaning behind her latest single ‘The Worst’, it’s inspiration as well as her complex relationship with love.

Benita, is open and honest on her track 'The Worst'. It gives the impression that she’s the type of person to feel things deeply, and whilst experiencing both the joys and frustrations of love, she also subtlety allows her personality to gleam through in its playfulness.

Initial perception                      

“Growing up I was more of a pop-girl, I listened to the main girls like Beyonce, Rhianna and Christina Aguilera. I’m an only child and I feel like I was kind of finding my own way in terms of what to listen to. As I got older I started to listen to Frank Ocean and more underground artists.”

“’The Worst’ is actually a pretty different track to what I have put out before. I feel that I have put out a lot of darker stuff, sad stuff but this song I actually recorded two years ago and felt that it was time to reset and give people something more laid back.

I don’t why I let it just sit there, I already had another song written in the same vibe but thought that through the past two years I’ve been challenging myself to strengthen my lyrics a bit more and be real.

This January I had a lot of time because I was covering from a cold and ended up rewriting the whole thing but I knew I was going to revisit it because it’s so beautiful I love that song.”

Artist perception

"It is a love song but it’s kind of based around that I hate that I love you type of feeling. It’s like ughh you’re the worst whilst rolling your eyes type of vibe. I can’t believe that I like you this much when I’m trying to focus on myself but you’re here distracting me.

I think it’s super relatable because we’re all not perfect when we’re trying to focus on ourselves and heal from past situations and then there’s this person who you’ll see at a party and you wouldn’t fully fold but you’d be like to yourself why do you do this” rolls eyes and smiles.

My relationship with love….I’m the worst at telling people how I feel. I wish I was a little bit better at it. It’s something I’m trying to work on. But I feel that I very much show people my love for them through actions and acts of service, spending time with them.

I made the beat with my producers Adrian and Thabs, we’re in the studio and they sampled me on a voice note where I did a bunch of melodies and then took it home."

Visuals

"There’s no music video but I wanted to try something different, so we have these funny clips that we filmed two weeks ago at my house.

They’re like little scenes based around the vibe of a Rom-com where we’re acting and doing funny stuff. My friend has a really good camera, so it will be a really good production aimed at social media."

Listen here